Catastrophic Consequences
by Svendances
Summary: What happens when Tank has to go away and leaves his fur babies in the care of one Ricardo Carlos Manoso? Read to find out. Three part fic about the trials and tribulations of raising cats.


_This story is in memorial of Two Guns and a Knife's cat whom recently passed away. _

_It was meant to be a one shot, but quickly took on a life of it's own once I sat down to write, so it will now be a three shot._

**Catastrophic Consequences**

The scent that wafted out of the apartment the moment I fobbed open the door was not what I'd been expecting. The usual calming scent of Bulgari mixed with Citrus Pine-o-Clean and something that was uniquely Ranger was missing. In its place was a smell that was distinctly… Tank? That couldn't be right. Especially in this concentration and this location. Besides which, I had it on good authority – Ranger's – that Tank was out of town this week.

Shaking my head, I pushed the door closed and tossed my keys in the bowl Ranger kept on the side table for that express purpose. I was just about to set my purse down beside the bowl when a small, black, furry creature leapt up into the space. Momentarily startled, I took a step back, but ended up standing on a furry tail, prompting an injured yowl from the creature – which I now realised was probably a cat – that had snuck up behind me. Rather than beat a hasty retreat when I swiftly removed my sneaker from its tail, though, the cat sat there and stared at me with it's wide, glowing – vaguely accusatory – eyes.

"Uhh, Ranger?" I called, sensing his presence somewhere in the apartment. "Can you call off your attack cats?"

His voice sounded from across the apartment, a hint of something somewhere between interest and alarm in his tone. "They're not actually attacking are they?"

I glanced from the large, orange, fluffy cat on the floor, staring up at my with his smushed face, to its sleek, black counterpart on the side table. Neither had moved nor taken their eyes off me. "Not yet," I allowed. "But they might be telepathically planning it. You haven't taught them ESP yet, have you?"

"Babe." His voice was much closer this time and I managed to life my gaze from the black cat to find him standing in the doorway to the central section of the apartment. There was another much smaller cat perched on his shoulder, like a pirate's parrot.

"It's a legitimate question," I pointed out. "If anyone could train cats to communicate with their minds and attack trespassers it would be you."

"They're Tank's, Babe," he said, using his socked foot to shoo the orange cat away before picking the black one up by the scruff of the neck and lightly tossing it into the living room.

I rolled my eyes at him. "Like that's any better?"

Crossing the distance between us, he pressed a kiss to the top of my head, simultaneously halting the shoulder cat's attempt to move from his shoulder to my own. "Tank's ESP is inferior," he replied with a straight face, even though we both knew he was joking. Ranger never admitted to being able to read minds when he was serious.

"That shouldn't matter," I told him, finally setting down my purse and kicking off my shoes. "Haven't you had them long enough to train them yet?"

Now it was his turn to shake his head as he lead the way through to the kitchen where there were two cloches set out on the breakfast bar ready for Ranger and I to share the dinner he'd invited me over for. "I've only had them for two hours."

"And yet this one is treating you like his own personal Segway?" I asked, eyebrows raised.

"Ambrose has always preferred the high ground," Ranger informed me matter-of-factly as he retrieved a bottle of wine from the fridge and poured two glasses. He set one on the counter in front of me and kept the other for himself.

"You're on a first name basis with the shoulder cat?" I asked.

"I'm on a first name basis with Rex," he replied with a shrug that made his passenger dig his claws in a little more. "And all he does is run in his wheel and twitch his whiskers at me."

I couldn't fault him there. That was an accurate description of Rex's daily activities. "You left out food hoarding," I mentioned.

"Right," he agreed. "He hoards food in those chubby cheeks of his until he can get it back to his soup can." Ranger moved to lift the covers off the food so that we could eat, but I stopped him with a hand on his forearm.

"You're not going to eat dinner with Ambrose on your shoulder, are you?" I asked, ensuring my tone conveyed the message _'Get that cat off your shoulder before you reveal the food.'_

Ranger looked like he wanted to roll his eyes at me, but obviously thought better of it. I was the eye roll queen, rolling his eyes at me would be blasphemous. With slow movements, he reached up to take Ambrose off his shoulder and set him on the tiles with a lot more care than he'd used when moving the other two along earlier. I watched his actions with interest, noting that he gave the cat a long pet down its back before straightening. I met Ranger's eyes with a question in my own as he crossed to the sink to wash his hands.

"What?" he asked, returning to the counter and our food that was waiting to be revealed.

"How come this one gets set down gently but the others are tossed and kicked about?" I asked.

"Ambrose is Tank's pride and joy," Ranger replied, pulling out a stool for me and shooing away the cat he found curled up on the seat. "He's Scottish Fold Munchkin."

I looked at him blankly. I'd never really been a cat person and would be lying if I had a clue as to what he was talking about. I assumed it was a breed of some description, but as far as I was concerned a cat was a cat was a cat. "Right," I said, scooting up onto the stool as Ranger did the same beside me. "Whatever that is."

"Folded ears, round eyes, short snout, short legs," Ranger explained, uncovering the food Ella had left for us. My mouth started watering the moment he revealed the two plates of roast pork and vegetables. _And the crackling!_ I was in heaven. All thoughts of strange cat breeds and my boyfriend's apparent affinity for cat wrangling flew out the window.

We were silent as I worked my way through sampling each individual morsel of food on my plate with appreciative moans until Ranger set his fork down briefly to take a sip of wine. "I have a request," he informed me as he set his glass down a moment later. "A favour if you will."

I chewed my mouthful of roast potato a little slower and gave him an, 'I'm listening,' look.

"I've never looked after this many cats before," he explained, rather than cut right to the chase as he normally would have. What did that say about the favour he was about to ask? And the man himself. Was he embarrassed by the necessity of asking such a thing of me? I decided to let him beat around the bush a bit.

"What's the maximum number of cats you've looked after before?" I asked.

"Two," he said, spearing another piece of broccoli on his fork and inserting it into his mouth to chew thoughtfully.

I shrugged. "Four isn't that much more than two," I pointed out. "Shouldn't be too hard."

Ranger shook his head, but swallowed his broccoli before correcting me. "Seven, Babe," he said. "Tank has seven cats."

My eyebrows shot toward my hairline of their own accord as my eyes nearly fell out of my head. "Seven?!" I gasped. "He's a regular cat lady." I glanced around the kitchen, half expecting to see seven sets of glowing eyes trained on me. "Are they all here?"

"Babe."

"Well are they?"

He pushed his plate away a little rested an elbow on the counter. "Would you like to meet them all?"

"I guess," I replied, giving him a curious look.

He dug a military whistle out of his pocket and gave a series of short toots on it. To my utter amazement there was a herd of cats surrounding us within seconds.

"Clowder," Ranger said, drawing my attention back to him as the cats sat patiently on the kitchen tiles before him. My expression must have matched the confusion I was feeling, because he continued, "A group of cats is called a clowder."

"Did… Did they just assemble at the sound of a whistle?" I asked, still not quite believing what my eyes were seeing. Seven cats! Seven apparently _trained_ cats.

"You know Tank," Ranger said with a shrug. "He likes efficiency."

"It's like the Von Trapps in cat form," I muttered, looking at the seven cats and trying to remember the names of the kids from Sound of Music so I could decide which was which. "Do they sing?"

Ranger shook his head. "They're cats, not children, Babe." And before I could say another word, he was introducing them all. "The sleek black on is Hunter," he informed me. "The orange fluffy one that's got a permanent scowl is Jameson. You've already met them. And Ambrose. The one that was on the stool is Xerxes."

"Which is that?" I asked, having only gotten a glimpse of the cat before he was evicted from the room earlier.

"The calico in the back that's already curled up to go to sleep again," Ranger explained. I decided to nickname him sleepy, just because I was pretty sure I wouldn't remember his name anyway and at least this way it defined the main characteristic I'd seen in him. "So that leaves Fergus, the manx by the cupboard. Ti-"

"Manx?" I interrupted, eyeing the cat Ranger had called Fergus.

"No tail," he pointed out patiently.

I looked from Fergus to Ranger and back again before asking, "That's a breed?"

He nodded once and pointed to the pure white cat directly below my dangling feet. It was rolling around on its back, displaying its stomach. "That one's Tiddles. She's an attention seeker. And that just leaves…" he glanced around the assembled felines to locate the last cat. "Where's Rover?"

"A cat named Rover?" I questioned incredulously. "Does it fetch?"

Ranger actually rolled his eyes at that. "How do you think he got his name?" he asked, sticking his hand in his pocket and pulling out a hackie sack. "Rover," he called, dangling the ball over the reddish coloured cat that was sat directly below his stool. "Fetch!" And he tossed the ball through the doorway into the hall. Six cat heads turned to follow it's progress, but Rover was a flurry of limbs and tail as he careened through the obstacle course of cats and out of the room. A moment later he was scrabbling back through the maze of his fellow felines, the hackie sack hanging from his mouth. He skidded to a stop beside Ranger's stool and dropped the ball, looking up with a distinctly expectant expression.

"Right," I said, munching on a piece of crackling as I gazed down at the assembled cats. "So about that favour you wanted?"

Rather than reply straight away, Ranger brought the whistle to his mouth and let out another series of toots. As if on cue – and knowing Tank and Ranger, it most definitely was a cue – the cats got up and sauntered away. All except the white one. Tiddles, I thin Ranger called her. She decided to stretch up and gently paw at my leg, waiting for the attention Ranger said she craved. I move my leg away and Ranger shooed her away with his socked foot as he had the orange grumpy one earlier.

"For the record," Ranger mentioned, sliding the whistle back into his pocket. "Shaking the box of kibble works just as well to get their attention."

"Ranger," I warned. It really wasn't like him to avoid the issue like this. I was the one who usually went to great lengths to not talk about what needed to be talked about. "Your favour?"

"I need you to stay with me this week," he said, pouring another glass of wine for us both and studiously avoiding my gaze.

Ranger had never made a request like that before. I mean, he'd asked me to stay the night before, but that was mostly because by the time I'd decided I should leave it was already two in the morning and we were both naked in bed. He'd made a very convincing argument that moving now would be detrimental to my health. Ranger had always been good at looking at the big picture, but this was something else entirely. What was going on?

"Is there some threat out there that I don't know about?" I asked after an agonising two minutes of waiting for him to explain further.

Holding my gaze for a solid thirty seconds, his blank face firmly in place, he finally uttered a simple, "Yes."

And I knew he was lying.

"What kind of threat?" I asked. "From who? Should I stay inside the building? What about Rex?" I made sure to vocalise all my usual questions, knowing it was what was expected of me, but when Ranger hesitated a mere millisecond before replying, I couldn't help myself. I snapped. I had to call him out. "Quit lying," I commanded, crossing my arms over my chest. "You and I both know I'm in absolutely no danger." At his look I decided to quickly amend my statement. "Well, no more danger than usual. So what is this really about?"

Ranger let out a sigh – an actual, human-sized sigh, not one of his little slight exhalations – and mirrored my arms-crossed position. "I've never looked after this many cats," he repeated. "And I might possibly need help."

I stared at him for the longest time, trying to assimilate the image of my tough, show no fear/emotion of any kind boyfriend with this vulnerable man in front of me. The one who just mentioned that he may not be cut out to look after a bunch of cats. He'd carried out full on military raids and rescued entire villages from war zones, but he couldn't manage the care of seven small felines for five days? Well, three more days to be exact. Tank had already been gone since breakfast time yesterday.

"Are you serious?" I finally asked. "You'll be fine. Look how you just handled them."

"Making them do tricks and shooing them away is different to remembering to feed them," he informed me.

Blinking twice in quick succession, I realised that it was very possible that Ranger had never had a pet before, and aside from liberating whole nations, had never had another being rely solely on him for survival. "How did you manage last time?" I asked, taking a gulp of wine. This new side of Ranger was just too much.

"Ella did everything," he explained. "All I had to do was allow them to stay in my apartment."

I didn't see the problem. "So get her to do the same this time," I told him, slightly exasperated. Is this how he feels when I'm being difficult? Hard to say, since he usually doesn't show emotion.

"She and Louis are out of town visiting Louis's sister," Ranger informed me. "They should be touching down in Texas right about now."

As a realisation hit, I nodded in sudden understanding. "So what you're saying is," I started slowly. "You think I'm more capable of looking after Tank's cats than you are."

"No," he countered. "What I'm saying is, I work odd hours and it might be good to have someone else in the apartment to help make sure they don't die of starvation."

"Tank works odd hours as well," I pointed out. "What does he usually do?"

"Hell if I know," Ranger practically snapped. "The guy is an enigma."

Taking another gulp of wine, I considered his favour a little more seriously. On the plus side, there was the 1000 count Egyptian cotton sheets, the shower that never ran out of hot water and Ranger. But on the other side, there was the Burg, and the Merry Men and Lula and Connie – all of whom were prone to gossiping – not to mention the responsibility of keeping Tank's precious cats alive. "I don't know," I said slowly. "Think of what people would say if I started living here. My mother would start ironing the neighbour's laundry in a fit of desperation once all of her own was pressed to within an inch of its life. And then there's Connie and Lula. They can smell you on me a mile away. And you know they'd jump to all the wrong conclusions."

Ranger narrowed his eyes at me. "I helped you look after you nieces when you drunkenly agreed to babysit them for the long weekend," he reminded me.

This was true, but I had a counter claim ready. "Yes," I agreed. "But my nieces are human beings with the ability to complain to their parents when their aunt forgets to feed them dinner."

"You think they wouldn't let Tank know?" Ranger refuted. "These cats are like his children."

I wanted to call bullshit, but I'd seen Tank's face when he talked about his cats and I knew he loved them as much as a mother loves her baby, so I had no choice but to agree. I couldn't let Ranger accidentally kill these poor, furry beings, no matter how much I disliked cats. "Fine," I sighed. "But you owe me big time, or I'm going to tell Tank you freaked out."

_Hands up all the cat people out there! *raises hand*_


End file.
